Last week, I posted to facebook a link to a page on our church website introducing my new series of messages. It’s a series where I promise to tackle some of the biggest questions of life and faith. However, an atheist friend of a lady in our church saw the post and posted a number of questions of her own. I thought I would take some time to write one or more blog posts about the questions she posed.
You can see the first post in this series here: Questions from an Atheist: Part 1.
Question #1
If God is really true, why do we have all the child indoctrinating and the weekly meetings to rub in the truth? Do we have to have a weekly “gravity is real” club or “let us be thankful for photosynthesis” club? If he were as real as all that, why the endless Bible studies and services ad infinitum? Why are you necessary, Pastor?
The original commenter on our facebook post asked me to address this question first. On the surface, this seems like a fairly simple question to answer, and I’ll start there first, but there is hidden inside this question a couple more difficult issues.
The Easy Answer
First, my easy answer is in this syllogism:
- If something is true, it is something that can be taught.
- If something is not innate, it is something that must be learned.
- If something is important, it should be taught.
- Knowledge of God is not innate.
- If God is true, knowledge about him would be important.
- THEREFORE: If God is true, knowledge about him should and must be taught.
Of course, people might debate me on the specific points of this logical argument, but I think it is sound and valid. However, the original question did not refer to the simple passing on of knowledge alone. The original question referred to the continual passing on of that knowledge, the continued reinforcement of that knowledge. The original question refers to gravity and photosynthesis as items that can be taught but are not worthy of weekly meetings praising their truth. The original question could be reworded to ask this: “If God is true, can’t we just be taught about him once and then get on with our lives?” Or “Why do I have to go to church?”
The More Difficult Answer
To answer this more difficult question, I assert that knowledge of God is not like knowledge of a scientific fact. It is more like knowledge of a scientific process. Let me illustrate:
When a budding scientist goes to school, he or she begins by studying scientific facts. Those facts will pique the interest of that budding scientist and will introduce that little boy or girl to the wider world around them and to the promise given to them in the scientific method. However, very early on in their education, the education shifts away from scientific facts and begins to focus on the scientific method. Eventually, when that young man or woman ends up in a PhD program, he or she is learning few new scientific facts and is instead daily applying the principles of the scientific method until he or she finally graduates.
Our newly graduated scientist would never enter the scientific community thinking that he has achieved total knowledge of the scientific facts, but also, our new graduate would never think that he had a full and complete grasp on the proper procedures for applying the scientific method. Studying journal articles, attending conferences, and having confabs with colleagues are all part of his continued growth as a scientist.
Now, here’s where the analogy connects back to the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God isn’t a fact without implications. It is a worldview and a method for how to live life. Those who would accept the affirmation “God is true” must also accept the implications of that worldview, and the continued study, meetings and gatherings are simply to help those people refine their understanding of those implications and to support them as they attempt to live them out.
The theist who never hangs out with other theists talking about their faith is like a scientist who never interacts with another scientist about their science.
The Most Difficult Question
However, even that isn’t the most difficult part of this question. I hear in this question a deeper concern that is directed against the entire idea of “organized religion.”
“If God is real, why do we need you, Pastor?”
The way I read the question is this, “If God is actually real, why doesn’t he just tell us directly what we need to know? Why would he use flawed human beings? Why would he need all this religious overhead?”
Ironically, this is a question I personally deal with a lot. It’s also a question posed in the Bible itself. Check out this passage:
I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him. — 1 John 2:26-27 NIV
The Bible seems to indicate that God is powerful enough to just teach people what they need to know without using any human agency. So again, why not just let God do it all himself? Why do we need all this religious overhead, traditions, buildings, preachers, and more? Wouldn’t life be better if we just tossed out all organized religion and just left it up to God (if he exists) to talk to whomever he wants to talk to?
Well, once again, I would go back to the analogy of the scientist. A great deal of money is spent on research equipment, buildings, teachers, and more. There are two reasons we spend so much money on all that. First, we spend the money because we don’t already know everything about the world and what we do know is always changing. The money is spent on discovering things that no one else saw before even though it was right in front of our eyes. Secondly, we spend the money because no single individual can be trusted with his or her interpretation of the facts. No individual scientist is ever trusted, and in fact, no good scientist trusts himself. A good scientist will always bring his research and his conclusions back to the scientific community and ask them to confirm or disprove his work. Toward that end, we need teachers, evaluators, people who are experts in the field as well as people on the cutting edges of discovery. The tension between the young scientists and the old establishment is the very thing that allows science as a whole to move forward and that helps the young scientists find their way.
Similarly, the worldview of the theist requires this same kind of collaboration. No theist should trust his or her own experience of the divine but should be willing to test that experience against the experience of others. Honest theists don’t revere Scripture because it is magical but because it is the account of the experience of other people. Honest theists don’t look at pastors and teachers as the institution to be rejected but rather as the experienced ones who are a little farther down the road from them.
In fact, I think that perspective is really behind what John was saying in his letter. In the overall context, he is trying to encourage the people to stay strong in their community of faith and not feel the need to chase after every new thing. I think he could say the same thing to a young scientist. “There are a lot of new ideas all the time, but trust yourself, your research, and the methods you have been taught, and continue to remain in the scientific community. That’s where you learned what you have now, and it is where you will continue to learn what you need.”
So, to go back to the question. If God is true, honest theists will choose to surround themselves with a community of practitioners, experts, and colleagues.
Have I Answered the Question?
I don’t know if I have adequately answered the question for everyone, but this is my best initial attempt at addressing this specific question.
I think religious knowledge, if true, must be taught, and it must be repeatedly reinforced in the context of a faith community with help from experts and the more experienced to bring people to “maturity” in their faith and also to help them become good “practitioners” of their faith.
Update — 8/29/2016
Apparently, I didn’t answer the question she was asking. In response to this blog entry, she wrote her own blog entry here:
http://hashtagchurchcrimes.blogspot.com/2016/08/pastor-blog-1.html.
She has given me permission to comment over there, but I’ll post my comments here too.
Apparently, I missed the point of her original question. Her original question now seems to me to have meant something like this:
If this teaching about God is true, why do people have to keep re-convincing themselves of it? Once you learn about gravity, no one doubts gravity and then needs to get re-introduced to the concept or convinced of it.
I have two answers to that.
First, there are many areas of life where something is learned once, but then needs to be “reconfirmed” repeatedly. The most obvious example of this is in a marriage. At one point in time, someone said to someone else, “I love you,” but if those words only got said once, most people would think something is wrong with that marriage. The truth is that people are emotionally “leaky” and we are all prone to lose “faith” in the commitments that others make to us. The same can be said about God. God has made verbal promises to us about himself and about his relationship to us. Even if he were as tangible as your next door neighbor, we would still need periodic “re-convincing” of his character.
Secondly, there are many truths in life that are so difficult to internalize that though they may be “learned” once they must be repeatedly reinforced not to convince ourselves that it’s really true, but to help us understand how it really works. Some examples of these incredibly difficult truths are quantum mechanics, general relativity, global warming, evolutionary biology. One can “learn” these disciplines in a classroom, but one does not truly internalize their complexity until after decades of continued work.
Finally, I want to also recognize that this question assumes something overly negative. Behind the lines of the question is an assumption that people are so hopelessly in doubt when it comes to God that all of religion is hanging on by this thin thread of “indoctrination.” If we could all just open our eyes, we would see what a farce this all is and get off the hamster wheel!
In fact, I think that final paragraph is the real heart of the question. I think my atheist friend is asking me personally, “Why don’t you just give up the charade, give in to your doubts, and let everyone else give in to theirs too?”
To respond to that I simply say this: I regularly confront my doubts and encourage others to confront them too. My faith is not built upon a tower of indoctrination and re-convincing that could fall over if one piece is removed. No, my faith is built upon something far more solid and secure. I feel deeply sorry for my friend who was encouraged to simply ignore her doubts and push them aside. For her, the Jenga tower eventually fell when she realized she couldn’t ignore her doubts anymore. For me, I’ve never had to ignore them. For me, I have worked through them and have come out stronger as a result. I hope to help her take the same journey.